Emoji by Ava Skoog
😊😢😠
(those emoji make up the game's actual title, but the LD website wouldn't let me use that)
Start with nothing. End with something? It is up to you, depending on how you feel…

Disclosure
1
The save/load functionality in the game was already coded up before the submission deadline but the JSON serialisation didn't work because the entity positions were using p5.js vectors, which don't serialise readily because of a circular handle to the p5 instance. I didn't have time to go through the codebase before the deadline to replace all the p5 vectors with simple JS xy objects so I disabled the buttons.
I fixed that the day after. I consider it a bugfix, and it doesn't alter/extend gameplay. If you feel like you don't want to consider it when rating the game, that's fine, but I added it to the main build anyway since it really was made during the jam but had a bug in it, and since people might want to save their game while playing anyway (even if they don't consider it part of the submission). Hope that's fine!
2
Turned out cookies were a bad idea for this sort of save data (too big), so I changed it to the moderner local HTML5 web storage instead, or servers might get angry and break the game and prevent you from going back to it, which would be very bad indeed. It does mean old saves will be lost. Sorry about that. Again, doesn't affect gameplay or add features or anything, just a very crucial bugfix.
Credits 👒
- Ava Skoog
Foley from zapsplat.com.
Font ARCO by Rafael Olivo.
Controllers 🎮
Arrows/WASD/QZSD to move and numkeys 1234 to interact. Click to start.
| Youtube | https://prinsessa.itch.io/emoji |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/emoji |
Ratings
| Overall | 173th | 3.885⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 339th | 3.551⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 143th | 3.833⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 109th | 4.026⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 32th | 4.488⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 66th | 4.013⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 286th | 3.279⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 61th | 4.118⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 21🗳️ | 24🗨️ |
I had fun discovering what all there is to do, though I had the game freeze/crash at one point (playing on macOS safari, this happened when I surrounded a hole with a moat of water all around, and was just about to add soil to make a flower. No idea if that's consequential or not though).
I love the visual and audio presentation. One tiny pet peeve is the raining animation starts feeling too long after watching it several times.
@hajden: Gosh darn it! 😢 That's because you're not supposed to be able dig where there is no neighbouring tile for the dirt pile to go to and I had written all the code to deal with that, but forgotten a tiny if statement to make sure it got applied correctly—fixed now! Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
So if you update the game now you will see that there is save/load functionality. I had already coded this up yesterday but the JSON serialisation didn't work because the entity positions were using p5.js vectors, which don't serialise readily because of a circular handle to the p5 instance. I didn't have time to go through the codebase before the deadline to replace all the p5 vectors with simple JS xy objects so I disabled the buttons.
I fixed that today. I consider it a bugfix, and it doesn't alter/extend gameplay, but if you feel like you don't want to consider it when rating the game, that's fine, but I added it to the main build anyway since it really was made during the jam but had a bug in it, and since people might want to save their game while playing anyway (even if they don't consider it part of the submission). Hope that's fine!
Music is mine, @sheepolution, just the raw sound effects from zapsplat. c: I’ve still edited, combined and cut most of those around in Audacity too to transform them into something specific to this game, and I’m thinking the audio category is also for sound design/use? I’ve always considered that on the same level as using a code library or preexisting samples for a digital instrument in the music at least. 😅
**EDIT:** Changed it so that it says '*foley* from zapsplat' instead for clarity.
@rainetheglutton: Ohh, zooming would’ve been great!
@unept: Yeah, I remained unsure about the UI until the very end, maybe it would’ve been better to always have all options visible but the unavailable ones faded out, so that the same key would always correspond to the same action?
Thankfully I took another shot at going through combinations and finally found soil. Interesting that someone else didn't find bricks instead. :smiley:
I found it hard to tell when :angry: would destroy something. I was always anxious about using it because I was never sure if it'd maybe just destroy my hard work. Maybe entirely removing something should be a different button of its own? Or at least it should be hard to undo something that took 3 steps in one accident.
Same goes for accidentally aiming at the wrong tile, or using the wrong action. Maybe have a little wind-up where a little loading bar / pie chart fills up on the emoji and then it does the action? It could already start the animation during that, but if I realize I'm doing the wrong thing I can still let go and cancel the action.
On the algae thing, maybe let me mix algae clumps with dirt clumps or mud clumps to make soil clumps too? Or to maybe make dry soil that way and then I need another step to water it or something. :thinking: It just takes a bit of luck to find that specific path to soil.
Last thing I thought about was having a reminder on what does what. Maybe a cute little recipe book that I can pull up which shows the order of steps to get a specific thing that I already learned to make/discovered. o:
But I realize this is an LD game and time was quite limited. Kudos to the cute game you made in it! :clap: :clap: :clap:
PS:

Here's my fort with all my flowery glory, until I figured that flowers don't get any fancier than that :)
Oh yeah, as you can see the bricks overlap the flowers, but that's a minor detail.
harmony of simplicity
What a writeup, @redflames! Really appreciate it. Bit of z ordering mistake, yeah. ): You raise a lot of good points, and post jam I'd definitely see to a lot of it. Already got another main project going when I'm not jamming right now, but who knows what the future will bring, eh? c:
Turned out cookies were a bad idea for this sort of save data (too big), so I changed it to the moderner local HTML5 web storage instead, or servers might get angry and break the game and prevent you from going back to it, which would be very bad indeed. It does mean old saves will be lost. Sorry about that. Again, doesn't affect gameplay or add features or anything, just a very crucial bugfix.
(altho if you're a little techy you can manually restore your old saves by going into your browser's cookie viewer for the site hosting the game, copying all the cookies containing savedata into one long string, and then pasting that into the web storage savedata (just save the game once and it will be created for you) also possible to view and edit in your browser's viewer for that)
On the UX side I would suggest always associating 😊😢 and 😠 with the same number, because I have destroyed countless items going from one tile to another and hitting 😠 by mistake because it was bound to 2 instead of 3 on the previous tile…
@lars-erik: My hint is to put some dirt in the algae! 👀
@emiliabea: Yeah, or maybe just clearer UI, haha. Has been established it wasn't the best. 😰 A little "cookbook" would've been cool!
Noticed the emojis above too, now. I could see this going somewhere with some sort of goal and some more features. Also, what @emiliabea said.
I think for this type of exploration game it's not really necessary to have an action that reverts every combination back or destroys elements. This and more combinations in general would be a nice!
Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my livestream!
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/494941349?t=0h33m21s
Hope you got some valuable feedback on your game and looking forward to seeing you next LD jam if I dont catch you before then! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin